In late August, the FCC adopted a Report and Order suspending new grants of interstate special access pricing flexibility for the “Price Caps ILECs”—principally Verizon, AT&T and CenturyLink (formerly Qwest)—adopted in the agency’s 1999 Pricing Flexibility Order. The Report and Order is a breath of fresh air in terms of acknowledging that a predictive
AT&T and Verizon capture the lion’s share of enterprise Wireline services business in the United States. This year, Level 3 acquired Global Crossing and CenturyTel acquired Qwest (now “CenturyLink”). These two companies could drive the return of the competitive environment of the mid-to-late 1990s that, unfortunately, collapsed in the wake of the WorldCom accounting fraud.